Whoever reads this, you have found it.
It does not matter where. It does not matter when. You have found this on a desk, or in a drawer, or in the pocket of a coat that belonged to someone you knew, or you picked it up from a table at a hotel you will never visit again.
You have found it. That is enough.
I am writing this because there is one thing I must do before I go on, and I have done it, and now I must tell you why I did it, without telling you what I did. That is the constraint.
If I explain too much, I have already lied.
The climb began at a track’s end, where the road gave out and became something only the rabbits knew.
The heather had turned to seed, and the seed-heads caught the light like dust in the air. I stepped over granite slabs that had been smoothed by rain and wind, edges rounded, corners gone, the stone worn down by weather that did not care whether it broke anything.
The slope steepened. My breath came harder. I stopped, once, twice, three times, to let the burn in my lungs settle. The wind picked up. It came from the north, carrying the scent of the coming frost, the first bite of winter reaching down the slopes before the clouds had gathered. The sky had no clouds. The air was clear. The cold came anyway. It did not need to announce itself. The cold was ordinary.
The pack sat heavy on my shoulders. Inside, nothing that mattered. A blanket, a flask, a knife, and something else. Something carried too long. The weight of it had bent my posture over the years, a slight lean I had not noticed until it was gone. I knew the shape of it in my pocket, the pull against my hip when I climbed, the way it rested against my thigh when I stood still. I had not weighed it in years. I did not need to. I knew it was old enough to have been carried too long, old enough that I could not remember when I began to carry it. That is the maximum history I will give. That is the maximum any of this deserves.
The moor opened around me, wide and empty.
Granite stones everywhere, low and black. Heather, and the grass, and the wind moving through them both. No trees. No buildings. The track climbed gently, and I climbed with it, breath measured, pace slow, the heat of the day fading from the rock behind me.
I walked alone. I had chosen to walk alone. The silence was chosen company. That is the difference, and that is all there is to say about it.
Halfway up, I stopped to rest.
A man passed me on the way down, a shepherd by his gait, his dogs silent at his heels. He nodded. I nodded back. Neither of us spoke. He knew my business. That was enough. He went down the track, and I went up. We were both where we belonged.
The loch lay above me, black water, no reflection, the far shore lost in the lowering light.
I reached it at dusk, when the first cold had already begun to reach down from the heights. There was no wind. The air was still. The water was ordinary. That was the point. It was water, and stone, and shingle, and the sky above it, and not holier than that.
I took the thing from my pocket.
Something small enough to have been worn. Warm to the touch, though the air had cooled. I held it in my palm for a moment, feeling its weight, feeling the shape I had memorized without ever naming it. I thought of the years I had carried it, without counting them. Far enough. Long enough. Not mine to begin with. That is the sum of it. That is all I will say.
I knelt at the water’s edge, the shingle cutting into my knees, the cold of it rising through my trousers.
I threw the object into the shallows. It sank without a sound, without a ripple, without anything to mark the moment except the water closing over it. I waited.
What I saw or believed I saw, which on that moor may be the same thing — a disturbance below the surface, a shadow shifting, a bloom of cold water rising and falling, a hand that was not there, or was. I do not know.
I will not say. I turned away before it resolved. I did not need to know. I did not want to know. The release was not a transaction. It was not a plea. It was not a prayer. It was a reasonable act performed by a calm man. That is all.
I stood. I shook my hands. The pocket where it had lived for years was suddenly light. The lightness was the sensation, not the absence.
I felt the change in my body, in the way I stood, in the way I breathed. I had carried something too long. I had set it down. That is the whole story.
I walked down. The descent was slower than the climb, but the weight was gone from my shoulders.
The track wound through the heather, and the heather was brown, and the first lamp of the valley below had come on. Evening had come on. The cold was reaching down from the heights faster now.
There was a gust of wind that went past me from the lake – and I started humming a tune. I felt thankful. Was it a gift? From the lake? From my unconscious? From myself to me?
“The honey bee is singing goodbye.”
That was the first line that arrived, because in the distance, the air had the sound of them. Because the heather had the color of them. Because the light had their warmth.
The smell of roses came together as like a weather report. They arrived as they arrived. I hummed the tune, and the words followed, and I did not resist either one.
I descended for an hour. More words kept coming. A call from a distance.
But the track ended at a gate. I opened it. I closed it. I walked into the valley, full of roses, toward the light, toward the bed, toward the fire, toward the door.
And I found my shelter. An inn, or a farmhouse, or a room above a shop. I do not remember which. It does not matter. There was a bed. There was a fire. There was a door that closed. I sat. I drank. I rested. I was unhurt. I was unhurried. I was alive.
This is the signing-off.
But there is more work. The cold comes down early here. I will go on. I will not vanish. I will not disappear. I will not merge with the landscape. I will not become a story.
I will walk. I will work. I will write things that do not need to carry anything. That is the promise, and that is the end.
The seasons turn. I go on.
Ten songs. Ten journeys. One release. This album closes with a man walking away alive, carrying nothing, humming a tune that arrived only after he stopped needing it to carry anything. You’ve just read the finale. The rest of the story is waiting, from the beginning. Join Those Who Know.
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